1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system for distributing digital content and to a storage medium. More particularly, the invention relates to a text information browsing aid system, a digital content creation system, a digital content distribution system, and a storage medium which are suitable to provide the user with readable digital content.
2. Description of Related Art
Related art apparatuses aid browsing of text information by adding translated text or translation of particular words in association with original text information, for example, in English.
Examples of such apparatuses include a foreign language publication with display of interpretation, disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 62-86385 (hereinafter referred to as a “first conventional example”), a printing apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 63-80319 (hereinafter referred to as a “second conventional art”), a machine translation apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 5-334350 (hereinafter referred to as a “third conventional art”), and a machine translation apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 7-121539 (hereinafter referred to as a “fourth conventional art”).
The first conventional art is print paper on which, in addition to a multi-columned foreign language text, interpretations, including translation of words and phrases in the foreign language text, and symbols, indicating the structure of sentences, are displayed between the lines. This facilitates interpretation compared with a case where translations, comments, and expositions regarding the foreign language text are all provided in the front or back section.
The second conventional art is a printing apparatus for printing a plurality of articles in a pair, which includes a determination device for determining the vertical width of a pair of articles being printed; a print position prediction device for predicting the print position of the articles by the printer based on the result of the determination by the determination device and the current print position; and a new page operation instruction device for instructing a new page operation based on the result of the prediction by the print position prediction device and the maximum print position. This clarifies the association between the pair of articles.
The third conventional art includes process S2 for obtaining and storing the layout information of an input original text, process S3 for translating the original text into another language, and process S4 for reformatting the translation result in accordance with the stored layout information. Thus, the translated text is automatically output in a format which readily allows confirmation of the correspondence between the translated text and the original text.
The forth conventional example includes, in addition to a conventional machine translation apparatus, a layout structure storage device, a word specification device, a character drawing device, and a font data storage device, so that translation is drawn in an image data storage device by using the character drawing device and the translation is output between the lines of image data of the original text on a display device. Alternatively, an arbitrary word is specified by using the word specification device, and then translation is drawn in the image data storage device by using the character drawing device and output at a position associated with the word between the lines of image data of the original text on display device. Thus, the output result includes figures, tables, and English text which appear in the original document, enhancing the readability of the result of translation by the machine translation apparatus and facilitating understanding of the translated document.
Furthermore, an example of a conventional system for providing digital content, such as news, is a personal electronic newspaper system disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 4-192751 (hereinafter referred to as a “fifth conventional example”). In addition, an example of technique related to providing digital content is a mail order catalog creation system disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 7-200701 (hereinafter referred to as a “sixth conventional example”).
The fifth conventional example is an electronic newspaper system which receives article information transmitted from an article information database storing article information regarding newspaper articles, and which then reconstructs the article information for display on the screen. The electronic newspaper system includes an information storage unit for storing interest and knowledge of a plurality of users as a plurality of personal newspaper composing information; a learning unit for learning personal newspaper composing information from the searching history of the user; a screen operation unit for operating the screen in order to obtain personal newspaper composing information and for obtaining article information in accordance with the user based on the personal newspaper composing information from the database and reconstructing the article information for display; and a control unit for controlling the information storage unit, the learning unit, and the screen operation unit.
This readily allows the user to obtain article information in accordance with personal interest and knowledge, and thus more detailed article information can be provided.
In the sixth conventional example, a product information file including product information to be shown on catalogs of the products (image or description of the products), a customer information file including personal information regarding particular properties of each customer, and a product condition file in which conditions matching each of the properties of the personal information are set for each of the products, are prepared. A product list extraction unit compares the personal information in the customer information file with the conditions in the product condition file, extracting only those products which match the conditions for each individual customer. A layout processing unit reads and lays out product information for the extracted products. A color electronic printer outputs on paper the product information which has been laid out, and the paper is bound into a booklet by a processing and binding machine, and sent to the customer as a catalog.
This allows creation of customer-specific catalogs on which only products suitable for each individual customer are listed.
The first to fourth conventional examples, however, output the same result for the same original text with no regard to the user. Thus, for example, even translated text or translated word, which the user is already familiar with and is not of importance, might be added to the original text.
That is, some users wish, instead of the entire original text being translated, only translations of articles or words necessary in accordance with the user's knowledge level to be added, from the perspective of reducing the amount of the entire text and enhancing readability.
This is not limited to addition of translation to original text, and the same applies, for example, to a case where information which aids browsing of text information such as comments and expositions is automatically added to the text information.
Article information distributed by a digital content distribution system has hitherto typically been composed mostly of text information, such as article information which is distributed in an electronic mail format. This has been the case because a large volume of data cannot be transmitted in an effective time period due to slow network transmission rates, for instance. Thus, in most cases, the article information which is distributed has only needed browsing on the screen, and there has been little need for printing. Even when the article information is printed, it suffices if the text information can be read, and thus there has been little need for considering the layout. However, with the recent enhancements in network transmission rate, it will be possible to distribute image information as well as text information in the future. In that case, browsing on the screen has the shortcoming in that it does not readily allow understanding of the overall article information. Thus, it is assumed that many users will wish to print the article information which has been distributed and browse the article information on paper.
In the fifth conventional example, the article information will be actually browsed by using a WWW browser; however, when the article information displayed on the screen with the WWW browser is printed, a piece of article information might not be contained in a sheet of paper and might be printed over a plurality of sheets of paper, considerably degrading the viewability of the print result. In particular, when an image and text information are combined to form a piece of article information, the image and the text information might be printed on separate sheets of paper. This hinders the user's understanding of the association of the text information and the image. As a result, the user may be prevented from understanding the overall article information and even the content of individual article information.
When the sixth conventional example is applied to a digital content distribution system, the problems previously described are solved to a certain degree by reading and laying out product information of extracted products. However, the output layout of a catalog is determined by the distributor of the catalog, and the catalog is printed in a predetermined output layout presumably viewable for the user. Thus, the catalog is viewable on average, but is not necessarily viewable for every user. That is, some users may feel larger font of text information enhances viewability, while other users may feel a smaller area for text information and a larger area for image enhances viewability.